Archive for September, 2011
Volunteering for Mountain Gorillas
Valerie Fox wrote: I want to see the Mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Ideally, I would like to volunteer Directly to help them, and see them more than just 1-2 days as is offered one most the tour trips. I am an RN and could volunteer in this capacity in order to stay longer and possibly [...]
Volunteerism Not Always Good
Posted by jimheck in Charity, Mountain Gorilla, Volunteerism on September 30, 2011
I often receive requests by sincere travelers who want to volunteer in Africa. The latest is from an enthusiastic woman who wants to help the mountain gorillas. She doesn’t want to pay “some tourist company thousands and not directly help.” Like many well meaning people, she’s got it very wrong. Particularly with regards to the [...]
Safari RoundUp
Our 14-day dry season safari in Kenya and Tanzania ended with a beautiful morning in the Mara, hardly a breeze and high wisps of cloud suggesting afternoon rain. The quantity of big animals we’d seen threatened my past records, and like every guide on earth, my greatest wish was that all my clients had a [...]
Marvel of the Mara
Posted by jimheck in Mara, OnSafari, Planning Travel on September 28, 2011
Twenty-seven lion, five cheetah, a rhino, 4 kills (not take-downs), a serval, two leopard (one with a recent kill) and a hyaena kill of a wildebeest. In three days in the Mara. And lots of vehicles. Is this a zoo? No, of course it isn’t. It is Kenya’s best game park, the Maasai Mara. So [...]
Arusha’s Getty
Posted by jimheck in Arts and Culture, OnSafari on September 26, 2011
Even Arusha has its J. Paul Getty. As we ended the Tanzanian portion of our safari, we visited Cultural Heritage, a tourist landmark that may have done more for northern Tanzanian tourism than the paved road to Manyara. Initially a curio shop, Cultural Heritage has finally fully embraced its name. Yes, you can buy most [...]
Umbrellas in the Dry Season
At home whether it’s raining or not doesn’t mean much. On safari it means a lot to me as the guide. What we do, when we do it, planned months ahead, is predicated on where and when it’s going to rain. That’s now near impossible with global warming. We were all having drinks tonight before [...]
Safari Snaps!
Ski pro Chris Benchetler and new wife, snowboard pro Kimmy Fasani, were dressing like they were on the slopes not the Serengeti! But guess what, it can be cold! No matter how hard I try, no matter how much our literature tells people to DRESS FOR COLD, most every traveler just presumes that Africa will [...]
Mustering the Migration
Posted by jimheck in Great Migration, OnSafari on September 21, 2011
It’s very hard to know how much to push yourself on safari, and it’s difficult for the guide to know how much you really want to. Today we found the migration in northern Tanzania – it was an absolutely Number Ten experience. But it was psychically expensive. We left camp at 815a and we returned [...]
Ho-Hum Just a Routine Day on Safari!
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, OnSafari, Perceptions of Africa, Serengeti on September 19, 2011
Bumpy road, alkaline dust, wind in your face. And a honey badger, some impala, hartebeest, elephant, a serval in a tree killed by a leopard and a family of 11 lion taking down a bull buffalo. Anyone who only reads first paragraphs might be misled. It was hardly an ordinary start. We lucked out big [...]
Saving A Penny with Davey Jones
Posted by jimheck in Economy, Planning Travel, Safety on September 16, 2011
For some clients, today, traveling for leisure is being squeezed by the economy. And as a result, they’re making some very dangerous decisions. Tight economic times are absolutely not the time to dismiss expert advice. I can think of no better example than the horrible tragedy last Friday in Tanzania. One of the ferries that [...]
How Not To Travel
Posted by jimheck in Safety, Terrorism, Tourism Trends on September 15, 2011
As we drove from the airport to the city last night, my newly arrived clients asked about the kidnaped British couple. The news isn’t good for Kenyan tourism, of course, but it isn’t surprising, either. The couple, Judith and David Tebutt, were vacationing at a lovely beach resort on the mainland opposite Lamu Island off [...]
Oiled Men vs. Oil Men
I went to bed last night with a sore throat caused by a horrible oil spill disaster near the Nairobi airport and woke to learn that hundreds had died, thousands more had burned and the still unfolding story needs to be told again and again to the west. Read on, if you can. My luxury [...]
What 9-11 Means to Me & Africa
Nine Eleven was a day of reflection, but in Kenya where I am it exploded. A British tourist was murdered and his wife kidnaped in the far north as southern Somalia imploded further, and Kenya desperately appealed to U.S. Republicans not to undermine its development by making it the victim of the U.S. budget crisis. [...]
Heading into the Bush!
Starting tomorrow I will be on safari in East Africa and blogging four times weekly from the field … I hope. Cell phone and internet reception has improved so much I think it really will be possible. We have an exciting safari ahead of us! It is also a remarkable collection of people, and I’ll [...]
Overland Samburu is OUTlawed
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, Safety, Samburu on September 7, 2011
Just as Russia’s leap into modernity created a powerful mafia, so it now appears that Kenya’s is doing the same. And for travelers this unfortunately means you can no longer travel overland north of Mt. Kenya. I’ve found myself becoming peculiarly cautious in my golden years, so I reflect when I was a twenty-something year [...]